Soaring Flamingos

Driving on the main road towards home, I was greeted by a familiar sight in the sky: a flock of soaring flamingos. The surrounding villagers looked up in awe, waving at the flamingos. Who knew that Malaysia would be home to some of the most beautiful flamingos in the world? Zoo Negara--Malaysia’s national zoo--rested around ten kilometers from my house. When I was young, my mother would take me to Zoo Negara every weekend. The exhibits were magnificent, and I particularly loved watching the Malayan tigers fight over their meals. Zoo Negara brought animals from the most obscure places in the world--places that made this little Malaysia seem like the center of the world. Although these animals did not live in their natural habitats, they managed to dig themselves a home in Zoo Negara. Well, except one animal.

At first, nobody enjoyed the flamingo exhibit. I did not either because I only liked their silky pink feathers. Zoo Negara’s employees struggled to keep the flamingos at bay. One time, I saw a Zoo Negara employee trying to feed some of these flamingos. She first tried approaching them and leaving a trail of crumbs behind her; they hated it all. The flamingos flew away from the lady and were greeted by an overhanging net of sharp steel. Some cried, some screamed, but none of them ate that day. Just a week after, I remembered seeing a few flamingos approaching the lady’s bucket and reluctantly pecking her trail of crumbs. I imagined that only a few of them ate that day, and the rest flew towards the empty night sky….. towards their pricked freedom. I have never visited the flamingo exhibit since then, and I retreated to the more popular exhibits: the Malayan tigers, pygmy elephants, and zebras.

During the night, I could faintly hear the terrifying squawks of five hundred flamingos. Each and every one of them whispering for food. Nobody answered their calls that night or the nights after. The local newspaper claimed that sixty-four of the five hundred flamingos have died by starvation, strangulation, and--surprisingly--stress. The employees in Zoo Negara did not even bury them; they left their bodies strewn across the exhibit’s vegetation for fertilizer and food. I always wanted to ask one of the employees if they had records of the flamingos’ parents. Maybe--just maybe--they could at least know the fate their very babies had to suffer. But I didn’t ask.

After a hundred and two flamingos perished, I entered secondary school. My friends took the

same classes as me, and all of them had my tutor too. These were the greatest times of my life and sometimes I wished that I could go back just to remember how good it was. I managed to visit all of my friends’ houses and met their families; some of them even became close with my family. At the center of my secondary school was me and me alone. None of my friends, however, lived that close to me, and they have never heard about the flamingo incident in Zoo Negara. Maybe they have and just brushed it off--who knows? Zah, one of my best friends, came to my house often and visited Zoo Negara once or twice. He had heard about their demise, but he refused to talk about them as if they just disgusted him. But everything changed that night.

The burning cold air of the night and the crack of a flamingo’s spine entered my room through my tiny windows. The room slowly echoed the sounds of distant shouts. Zah and I woke up, deafened by the scream--the screams of locals this time. Zah and I ran through my front gate towards the shouts. Covering the main road was an army of Zoo Negara employees. The maniacs screamed towards the sky where a large pink entity began to amalgamate. Zah asked what was going on, and apparently a very lucky flamingo managed to break through the steel net. Unfortunately, the flamingo had been killed in the process, but his sacrifice brought the liberation of his brothers and sisters. About three hundred flamingos shaded the night sky and left the world--a world with no light--in turmoil. The commotion on the main road was too much for Zah and I, and we fell back to the comforts of my home. When we returned, the squawking was gone and silenced by a violent monsoon rain.

The next morning, the flamingo exhibit was empty. All of them escaped; something I assumed that each and every single one wanted more than food. The local newspapers did not report that night’s incident. The village carried on while its villagers ran their errands and enjoyed the delicacies that smothered the streets. But in the untouchable distance, I spotted what seemed to be a large bird. It was flying towards me at an incredible speed, but before I could truly name the animal, the bird shattered into a million pieces. The villagers looked at the beast in horror, even as it shattered. It reminded me of the scene in The Birds when the mass of gulls descended upon a group of hopeless bystanders. Revenge. It had to be.

The villagers ran for cover. They hid in their homes, under their beds, and under their favorite tables. Yet, we were wrong after all. The flamingos were not preparing for an attack but were greeting us after what seemed to be a tedious journey. Their squawks made a beautiful melody that smoothened the rough edges of the steel net. I could faintly hear them whispering “we were home”.

To the surprise of Zoo Negara’s employees, the flamingos managed to discover the zoo and return to their very own exhibit. I ran to the zoo, hoping that the flamingos were safe and sound. When I arrived, they were on the ground, fighting over the crumbs--just like my favorite Malayan tigers. The flamingos finished ten full buckets of crumbs, and they didn’t even stop by then. Their eyes were red with hunger, hatred, and longing. I knew one of Zoo Negara’s employees who was obsessed with flamingos and asked him if he knew where the flamingos went that night.

“Who knows? Maybe they were trying to find home,” he replied. The employees agreed to take down the steel nets that were scraped with pink feather and flesh. Today, it is an open exhibit--one of my favorite ones too.

But something still didn’t feel right. Whatever the employee was trying to stay, I never forgot it. It took me a long time to realize what he was trying to say all along…

They did find home that morning. That home was Zoo Negara. That home was the open exhibit. That home was their home. Wherever they tried to fly, it took them time to realize that they were flying towards a void. There was nothing out there for them. All they remembered in their past lives was gone, forever trapped in that void. No matter how far they flew into the distance, they would have never found it--whether that were their past homes, past friends, or past lives. They were all gone.

Luckily for us, the villagers of my town have found it already, or at least they think they have. The drastic continues--never ending. And the greatest threat of our existence is finding it. This life, this home, this family, this village; they are just trees planted into the ground, refusing to be moved by the constant winds of change. Yet, we move. I move--

As I return from four years abroad, the main road seems longer than usual. The small streets led to gates of nowhere. The delicacies of home only suffocated my senses, and the people--my neighbors, my friends, my family, my people--turn into shapeless figures. The air is brittle and tasteless. The villagers searched for the little boy, screaming and shouting on the streets. But high above…… soaring flamingos.